Tangy Light Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcake

Spring time is here and the air is fresh and crisp. With Easter round the corner, our little chef bakes a batch of tangy Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes to bring to school to share with her friends. The whole kitchen smells so nice of refreshing lemon.

Ingredients : (makes about 24 medium size cupcakes)

130g cake flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

120g cream cheese (left to soften at room temperature)

120g butter (left to soften at room temperature)

140g castor sugar

1 tsp lemon zest

2 eggs (room temperature)

1 tbsp lemon juice

Get ready all the ingredients. I just invested in a plastic tray from the $2 shop to help contain our ingredients for all our future cooking episodes. See how useful it is to have everything placed so tidy on a tray and easily transported.

Here she has just grated the zest from the lemon skin and is squeezing the juice from the lemon. Tip – to extract more juice from lemon, it helps to press and roll the fruit on the table for a few times before cutting it up to squeeze juice.

Cream butter and cream cheese together until light and creamy. It will take about 10 mins. The butter and cheese was at room temperature to soften so that the blending will be faster and will avoid them from curdling due to mixing too long.

Add in sugar and continue to mix till fluffy.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add in the lemon zest and lemon juice and stir to mix.

Sift in the powder mixture of flour, baking soda and baking powder.

Fold the flour into the mixture. Do not use electric mix. You will probably need to help the child at this step to avoid over mixing, resulting the cake to turn heavy textured.

Scoop into lined muffin cups (about 1/2 full for flat to brim, or about 3/4 full to have ‘mushroom’ top) and bake in pre-heated oven at 160 degrees celcius for 20 minutes.

I must say these cakes are really light and yummy. In fact the portions of the cupcakes felt too small to be satisfying each of us had to have at least 3 at one go. Next time round we will make large sized cupcake instead of medium sized ones.